The Morning After The Bikeminded Film Festival

21/06/2013

What a night! The first ever Bikeminded Film Festival seems to have been a huge success. For those of you who came along, it was good, wasn’t it? For those who couldn’t make it, here’s what you missed.

On a beautiful summer’s night, people arrived early, keen to have a drink and a chat before the show and of course, to bag a good seat at the beautiful, listed and rather incredible building that is the Coronet Cinema in Notting Hill. As well as showing the films, we also wanted the festival to highlight key cycling projects and organisations that we thought you’d find interesting and inspiring.

Introduced by Bikeminded’s very own Marina Kroyer, the festival began in fine style with Adam Thompson from Velonottetalking about the evolution of their unique late-night architectural cycle ride and their Albertina event tomorrow night (22 June) in London.

Founder of social enterprise Bikeworks, Jim Blakemore, spoke next about the fantastic work his organisation is doing with recycling bikes and selling at affordable prices, as well as providing mechanics for our very own Dr Bike sessions and bike maintenance courses. He also exclusively announced that Bikeworks would be launching a Disability Cycling Centre of Excellence at the Olympic Park next year, which sounds very exciting!

Then we had the first films of the evening. Taken from our Cycle Shorts short film competition last year, we showed 8 quite varied films, which were all well received by the audience and was additionally nice for the directors who were in attendance too.

Our final speaker was well-known and highly influential cycling blogger Mark Ames from IBikeLondon who gave us a humorous, informative and entertaining take on cycling, history, travelling and his liking for strangely beautiful theatres such as the Coronet. He also introduced the main feature ‘Janapar’which stars his friend Tom Allen and with whom he’d been on a cycling trip across Taiwan.

Mark Ames speaking last night

And then of course, we all sat back to watch the main feature of the Festival ‘Janapar’. If the feedback on Twitter after the event was anything to go by, the audience rapturously received this and I think if there were such a thing as the Cycling Film Oscars, I’m sure ‘Janapar’ would win!

People tweeted saying it was adventurous, humorous, warm, funny, entertaining, adventurous and the word ‘inspiring’ came up several times too. Essentially, the film is about one man travelling across the world on his bike because he simply wanted and needed to do it. A simple premise you may think, but after watching the film, I think everyone there last night would say there is so much else to it and that you need to see it yourself to really appreciate it.

Watch the trailer for ‘Janapar’ below:

So, if you haven’t yet seen ‘Janapar’, visit janapar.comThey also have screenings across the country or do what lots of other people have done (including us) and host a screening for your cycling friends/community/club.

Thanks again, to everyone for coming last night as it was wonderful to see the cinema so full with everyone enjoying themselves at one of our cycling events. And who knows, if there is enough positive feedback, we could even do it again next year!